


Positive and Negative Space

by pyrrhical (anoyo)



Series: Author's Favorites [3]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: AU - Reincarnation, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 13:23:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10103405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoyo/pseuds/pyrrhical
Summary: A prompt fill on fic_prompty@DW.Maybe it's happened before, and it'll happen again. Maybe it's predestined.Maybe it's just a second chance.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zippit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zippit/gifts).



> Original prompt: [here](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/175800.html?thread=7782584#cmt7782584) by zippitgood.

Ed stops at the same cafe every day after class. The Amestris Cafe. It’s a hole in the wall, tiny little place, but it’s always got tables available, and Ed loves their lattes. 

He started coming here when he started grad school -- at sixteen. Al had started his undergraduate program at a different university in the city one year later, so now Ed comes here alone. Al has his own cafe, and Ed is proud of him. 

He has moments, sometimes, where he panics, because he can’t immediately see Al. He doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s a remnant of their childhood, growing up without parents, home to home, their only constant a family friend who would’ve adopted them if the system had let her.

Maybe it’s a completely different reason. Ed really doesn’t know. Ed knows he’s proud of Al and all that he has accomplished, the life that Al has built outside of Ed.

About six months after Al found his own cafe, someone new walked into Ed’s. 

Ed knew all the regulars, even knew most of the irregulars, so someone new always gave Ed a moment to pause and consider. Ed loved to guess at people, pretend that he was Sherlock Holmes, deducing the mystery of the unknown.

This man, Ed didn’t guess. Or rather, he didn’t need to. Ed just knew. Sometimes that happened, and Ed always wrote it off as a very vivid opinion. People he came across who were too familiar, too quickly. It had led to some of the best friendships of his life. It had led to some of the most awkward moments of his life. Ed didn’t live in happy mediums.

But this man, Ed couldn’t ignore. He tried to write it off, but it clung, like particularly staticky cellophane, to the back of his mind.

This man was important. Ed knew it, in the same way he knew that positive and negative space couldn’t exist at the same time.

The man had been a soldier, but he wasn’t anymore. Or rather, that wasn’t his job anymore. Ed didn’t think the soldier would ever really be gone, and that the man would always think with just a little bit of danger in his conclusions. 

What surprised Ed the most wasn’t that he seemed to know this man down to the fiber of his being. What surprised Ed was that the man seemed to know him in return. 

Love stories often start with a caught glance across a room, some sort of lingering look that leads the protagonists into a blooming romance worthy of publication.

This wasn’t that. At least, not quite. There was a caught glance, lingering and contemplative, but it didn’t lead to a blooming romance. Instead, it led to the feeling that something out of place had finally settled. It wasn’t a new romance. It was an old one. 

Maybe a foregone one. 

Ed had never let falling in love distract him from his studies, or from his caring for Al. 

He still hadn’t. Ed hadn’t fallen in love. He had found himself already there, no uncertainty. 

Less than a minute after catching the man’s glance, Ed knew he wasn’t alone. 

There had been no deciding, no confusion. 

He didn’t think twice about following the man home, about falling into bed with someone he had just met -- or known forever -- before he’d ever had his first kiss.

There had never been a choice, just the inevitable conclusion.

Just the feeling of _finally_ sinking into his bones. 

He learned the man’s name the next morning. Roy. 

Ed knew that Roy was someone he had loved before. Someone he had loved always. 

He knew that this was the first time he’d ever been able to have him.

He knew that he would never let him go again.


End file.
